By Chipo Gudhe

In a startling turn of events, gold miners have invaded the premises of Camelot Schools in Kwekwe, causing alarm among school authorities and community members alike.

The invasion comes hot on the heels of Globe and Phoenix Primary School disaster which saw pupils being injured after a classroom block collapsed into a mining shaft underground. The miners who possess special mining grant letters issued by the Kwekwe Council on Reserved Area900, which is said to extend to the nearby Mbembeswani area allege that they have already formalized with the Ministry of Mines and are waiting for clearance of mining rights.

A visit at the school yesterday by members of the Kwekwe Civil Protection Unit (CPU) revealed that three mining syndicates JPD, FEG, Ivine, and Tinei Mining are already operating within the school which owns 80 hectares of land.

The syndicates have already sunk shafts and work is currently in progress.

Camelot Schools authorities have raised concerns about the safety of their students and the impact on the school’s expansion plans. Authorities fear that the presence of miners on school property might disrupt the learning environment and compromise students’ safety and security.

“We fear for the safety of our pupils now that these mining activities are being done within the school. The school has land which expands to 80ha. We have a primary and high school and if you have noticed the high school is using facilities meant for primary. We have plans to construct a boarding school and those plans are being disrupted by these mining activities. Last time the police came and dismissed others who were mining here illegally. As a school, we sat down and brainstormed on what we could do to protect the school from miners so we thought whilst we are looking for funds to expand we requested a special mining grant from the council in 2019 and it was granted last year a year later. Then these guys came and started operating armed with the same special grant,” said Jethro Nyarota Camelot board chairperson.

A supervisor at FEG Syndicate, Billiart Stanley, which is operating at Camelot said they have been operating at the school for two months and they have had disputes with the school administration.

“We have been here for two months and we have had disputes with the school but we are operating within the confines of the law as we were granted a special ming grant by Kwekwe City and other authorities. We were expecting to sit down with the school team but we were only surprised when we saw the CPU team coming,” he said

Another miner in the area Munyaradzi Munyanyi said Camelot should state where their dispute was emanating from.

“What is the dispute here? They should come out in the open and specify what they want to do. Do they want to run a school or a mine? They are the ones who opened the floodgates after they started registering the property at the mine and then slacked. In mining if you do that you leave room for others to claim that land for mining. We made an application with the Ministry of Mines and we were told that land belongs to no one hence we registered. The school should have made better plans to protect their land,” he said.

Camelot Schools management stated that they had previously applied for a special grant to mine in a bid to safeguard their land. However, the granting of similar permits to unauthorized individuals has put the school in a vulnerable position.

“We thought that if we could apply for special grant it would keep out miners. We also had a view of introducing mining as a subject in our school,” said Head of Schools Chivaura.

Meanwhile Kwekwe District Environmental Officer Daniel Magombedze told the miners to stop all operations as they are operating illegally.

“These people here are operating illegally they have not yet been granted mining rights and as Environmental Management Agency we have not made environmental assessments. We have not granted them environmental impact assessments and they do not have mining rights or Consent from Camelot to mine within their area so all that they are doing should stop.

Kwekwe District Schools Inspector Herbert Maziriri said the safety of the pupils comes first.

“We do not want to create another Globe and Phoenix Primary disaster here. The safety of school children is paramount it supercedes everything. These activities should not disrupt learning, its my fervent hope that this issue is resolved and peace prevails,” said Maziriri.